NewsWrap
for the week ending September 11, 1999
(As broadcast on This Way Out program #598, distributed 9-13-99)
[Written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian Nunes,
Jason Lin, Martin Rice, Rex Wockner, Chris Ambidge, Laurie McBride,
Andres Duque, Jennifer Richard, Greg Gordon & Lucia Chappelle]
Anchored by Josy Catoggio and Greg Gordon
In what's being called a watershed in the history of Colombia, a sweeping
bill to establish civil rights for gays and lesbians has been introduced in
the national Senate. Activists worked closely with Senator Margarita Londono
to develop the bill entitled, "By Which the Rights of Gay Women and Men Are
Recognized." It would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list
of categories in existing law against bias crimes. It also provides for
"liberty of association and congregation between homosexuals." It offers a
series of provisions for a partnership contract called a "valid social
patrimony agreement," including inheritance rights, social security benefits,
and health coverage for partners and partners' children. The proposal also
makes provisions for sex reassignment surgery. In addition, it calls for the
National Ministry of Education both to remove texts which teach
discrimination and to provide "clear and objective information regarding
sexual orientation and identity."
What's believed to be Mexico's first law prohibiting discrimination against
gays and lesbians was enacted by Mexico City's General Assembly last week.
Sexual orientation is included in a list of categories in the new human
rights law. But some political parties which opposed the bill are seeking a
ruling from the national high court to remove the sexual orientation
language, and activists have called for letters of support to the President
of the General Assembly.
It was a legislative grand slam this week as the California state
legislature passed all of its lesbigay-related bills before going into
recess. Democratic Governor Gray Davis now has a month to sign or veto two
civil rights bills, two domestic partner bills, a hate crimes measure, a
needle exchange bill, and one to track HIV infections by numerical
identifiers instead of names.
Davis' Republican predecessors had consistently vetoed all domestic partners
and needle exchange proposals, the HIV measure, and a number of prior civil
rights bills. But Davis himself dictated most of the terms of the needle
exchange measure and one of the domestic partnership bills, so he's expected
to sign them. His preferred domestic partners bill, carried by openly
lesbian Assemblymember Carole Migden, establishes a statewide registry open
only to gays and lesbians and to heterosexuals over the age of 62 -- but it
has no tangible benefits except for authorizing hospital visits. It also
allows the Public Employees Retirement System to extend health care benefits
to domestic partners should any participating California government employer
wish to do so.
The last and most cherished victory was a bill to protect students from
discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation. This bill had
been the primary target of a major opposition campaign by the religious
right. Openly lesbian Assemblymember Sheila Kuehl's proposal had failed by a
single vote in the Assembly earlier in the session, but was resurrected in a
simplified form when less than two weeks remained, and was fast-tracked
through the Senate. It reached the Assembly floor as the session was drawing
to a close, and when the "yea" vote ensuring passage was counted, the crowd
in the chambers erupted in a shout as supporters ran to embrace each other.
In Britain, Michael Portillo this week became the first leading member of
the Conservative Party to volunteer publicly that he had had "homosexual
experiences." It wasn't exactly a coming out, since those experiences were
in his college days in the 1970's, and he swore that he had never done any
such thing in the years of his public life, remaining faithful to his wife of
17 years. Portillo is viewed as the political heir of Margaret Thatcher and
served as Defence Minister under John Major. He was the Member of Parliament
for Enfield Southgate for 13 years before being ousted in the 1997 Labour
landslide by openly gay Labour newcomer Stephen Twigg. During his political
years, Portillo actively supported the ban on military service by gays and
lesbians, and actively opposed lowering the age of consent for sex between
men to match that for heterosexuals. It's not yet known whether Portillo's
own "homosexual experiences" took place before or after he turned 21, the gay
age of consent at the time. Portillo still has no regrets about either of
those political positions. He made his revelation to the "London Times"
public now in an effort to "clear the decks" of the many gay rumors which had
long swirled about him, as he prepares to reenter electoral politics. He's
one of many now seeking the nomination for the safe Tory Parliamentary seat
of Kensington and Chelsea, vacated by the death this past week of Alan Clark.
Publicly, the Tories have welcomed back this powerful player and praised his
honesty, but there's a very real possibility that the charismatic Portillo
could go on to replace the drab William Hague as party leader. The national
gay and lesbian lobby group Stonewall welcomed Portillo's announcement,
hoping it signals a softening of the Tories' anti-gay campaigning and a
future where sexual orientation won't matter at the ballot box. But the
direct action group OutRage! and a number of other gays and lesbians charged
that Portillo's anti-gay positions had been hypocritical, and were more
concerned about the future direction of his politics than his past sexual
experiences.
South Africa's controversial Gay and Lesbian Alliance Party reported that
it's registered more than 65,000 members nationally, and seems to be on track
to reach its goal of 100,000 members by January. Two-thirds of its members
are between the ages of 17 and 32. Almost 30% are in the Western Cape, with
about one-fifth each in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and the rest fairly
equally divided among the other six provinces. The GLA is preparing for
upcoming local elections. The new group missed the deadline to register its
candidates for this year's national and provincial elections when an
electrical fire in the home of party president Juan Uys destroyed most of its
records.
Malaysia's former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, now three months
into a trial for sodomy, has been rushed to a hospital to be treated for
arsenic poisoning. After Anwar had begun to show symptoms, a urine sample
was somehow smuggled out of the prison he's been in for the last year, and
sent on under a phony name to a lab in Melbourne. That lab found 77 times
the usual level of arsenic, and more than four times the levels typical of
industrial exposure. Just as Anwar and his supporters claim that all the
charges against him of sodomy and corruption represent a plot by Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamed, they now believe the arsenic to be an
assassination attempt. But Mahathir had suggested a year ago that Anwar had
given himself the beating a top police officer later admitted to, and now the
attorney general suggested that perhaps a member of Anwar's own family had
administered the arsenic in a bid for public sympathy. However, the
government has promised a full investigation. Earlier this year, Anwar was
sentenced to six years in prison on corruption charges for allegedly
interfering in the police investigation of his alleged sexual misconduct.
Observers had many concerns about irregularities in that trial, and the deck
seems similarly stacked against Anwar in the current trial on sodomy charges,
all of which he denies. Nonetheless, he remains a powerful symbol for
Malaysia's new reform movement, which hopes to make gains in next year's
elections against Mahathir's monolithic ruling UMNO party.
There were heavy sentences this week in the U.S. following convictions in
widely-reported murders of gay men. In Jacksonville, Florida, Gary Ray
Bowles was sentenced to death for a second time after a retrial for the
murder of gay Walter Hinton. Bowles slammed a 40-pound rock onto the head of
the sleeping Hilton. Bowles has confessed to killing a total of six gay men;
he's already received a life sentence for another Florida murder and will be
tried for additional murders in Florida, Georgia and Maryland. In Palm Beach
County, Florida, Bryan Donahue was sentenced to 50 years in prison and his
friend William Dodge to 25 years for the bashing murder of gay Steve
Goederis. Goederis had made the mistake of saying, "Hey, beautiful" when
passing the then-16-year-old Dodge on the street.
But the Human Rights Campaign is launching two new television spots it hopes
will combat anti-gay violence. Both feature Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew
Shepard, the young gay man who was notoriously bashed to death in Wyoming in
October. Shepard talks simply about how she loved her son and what a warm
and special man he was. The theme of the campaign is "choose to understand."
And finally, the U.S. religious right's highly political, so-called "Truth
in Love" media campaign called on gays and lesbians to turn to "ex-gay"
ministries to change their orientation. But one leading ex-gay, Anthony
Falzarano, charges that not one cent of the 4 million dollars he believes
those ads raised ever went to the "ex-gay" movement. Falzarano was summarily
dismissed in mid-August from his place on the board of Parents and Friends of
Ex-Gays, P-FOX, a group he founded; he was also denied entry to the annual
conference of Exodus, the international ex-gay network. Now he's claiming
that the religious right has been "using" ex-gays instead of supporting them,
and that the entire movement may be gone in a year or two. When asked to
comment, the Human Rights Campaign's David Smith remarked, "When your enemy
is imploding, you don't get in the way."